Re: tail +n does not work under Linux?

From:

Eric Blake

Subject:

Re: tail +n does not work under Linux?

Date:

Wed, 20 May 2009 14:20:24 +0000 (UTC)

User-agent:

Loom/3.14 (http://gmane.org/)

Pádraig Brady <P <at> draigBrady.com> writes:
> > - -n, --lines=N output the last N lines, instead of the last %
d;\n\
> > - or use +N to output lines starting with the
Nth\n\
> > + -n, --lines=CNT output the last CNT lines, instead of the last %
d;\n\
> > + or use +CNT to skip the first CNT-1 lines\n\
> > --max-unchanged-stats=N\n\
>
> CNT doesn't read too well :)
> How about COUNT or NUM?
COUNT runs into length problems - adding 4 characters per instance builds up
fast. I'll try with NUM instead. As it is, I already had to rephrase things
since "nth" is a word, but "count'th" and "num'th" are not.
> What about the texi docs?
They already used @var{count} rather than @var{n} in some instances, but I will
go ahead and sweep these to make them all consistent.
> Would one change head -n docs also for consistency?
Sure, sounds good.
> What about the other instances of N in tail --help?
For --max-unchanged-stats, I actually WANT to keep N. After all, you can't
use --max-unchanged-stats=1k, nor can you use --max-unchanged-stats=+2 to mean
start at the second item. For all other instances of N in tail, my first patch
already caught them.
I'll work on respinning this patch to cover more territory.
--
Eric Blake